Disclaimer: Don't own them and it makes me sad.

Email: makolane@aol.com

Summary: No one knows what it's like to be the bad man ...

He thinks I don't know who he is.

He assumes a lack of glasses and a change of hairstyle conceals him from the world, but little does he realize he can't hide from me. For I remember him as clearly as the spring skies arcing over Kansas, bright blue above that sleepy little town we once both called home.

How do I miss thee, Smallville? Let me count the ways.

Now, with his hands tightly wrapped around my throat but with nowhere near enough pressure to kill, he could end my life with a flick of his wrist and yet he won't, not even when tempted beyond human endurance.

He does, after all, have a reputation to uphold.

But, then again, so do I.

With this in mind, I play my trump card, as his fingers play at my throat. "Clark. Clark ... please ..."

A strangled, breathless whisper but he hears it and immediately pulls his hands away as if burnt. Staring at me with the sort of fear usually reserved for nuclear bombs, first kisses, and high school
reunions ... or worse.

My throat throbs with renewed blood flow and my gasps burn, as if the air itself is on fire. "What's wrong?" I croak, trying not to laugh at his slack-jawed expression. "Did you think I'd forget my old, dear friend from the Smallville plains? Come on, Clark, you should know me better than that." A painful swallow. "At least I thought you would."

"You knew?" He gapes, aghast with dawning realizations. "All this time ... and you knew?"

I bark a laugh and struggle to my feet, knees watery. "Why such surprise? You knew who I was all this time. We were great friends back then, weren't we, Clark?" My breathing slowly becomes easier and I grin at him. "Better than friends actually."

Time stands still for a moment and his jaw sets like steel. "You don't remember me," he says with an odd conviction, as if trying to convince himself that I'm somehow creating our shared past from my usual cache of lies. "You don't remember anything."

My, my, how insulting. "Of course I do. I remember everything and every place, Clark. You and I, and all the times we spent together. In the fields, in my home ... " A heartbeat of a pause. "In my bed."

He flinches as if I've slapped him and I smile.

Ah, yes, memories of shattered love.

Better than kryptonite, those are.

"All those days, sneaking out after school to the old Luther mansion. Remember that old house? My father imported it, stone by stone, and the nights we spent together later on, after we convinced Mom and Dad that Young Lex wasn't such a bad fellow after all. Come on, surely you
remember. It took a long time too. My, how your father hated me."

Lord, how he did. Smart man.

"You had the most beautiful hair back then," I reminisce, enjoying the sight of his cheeks, usually ruddy with righteous power, turning white as salt. "My fingers used to tingle after running them through it." I examine my hands, trying to recapture memories of the sensation, like the aching of a phantom limb. "It would spread over the pillows like black silk, so wonderfully soft. I was jealous of it really, but then, it was mine to have, to touch, whenever I wanted wasn't it, Clark?"

"Be quiet, Luther." Ragged whisper and I smile at my ever-valiant farmboy turned alien savior, struggling so hard to forget what was destined to be remembered forever, at least by me.

My poor, beautiful Clark. You never had a clue, did you?

How awful it must have been for him after our final parting, where we swore eternal enmity toward each other, mere hours after making love. Something to do with that little country girl, what was her name again... Lana? Something where she ended up on the wrong side of some grand Lex Luther scheme or another, ended up dead in his arms, and of course, it was all my fault. I'm sure I never really meant to hurt her, the hesitant rube I was back then, but in all honesty, who can rehash such trivialities?

I kill with impunity now and the only thing worth remembering from those days is that Clark Kent used to be mine.

Used to be. Harsh words, a poet's sorrow, and it's sad to see he's suffering from his own iron-willed brand of denial. Forgetting one's strange bedfellows is one of the more common bad side-effects of super- herodom and it never does any of them a bit of good.

Especially when it's Lex Luther you're trying to forget.

Throat working, his eyes bore into me and I wonder if he's using that blasted X-ray vision again, maybe to look beneath my skin and see if there was ever any trace of humanity in me, any excuse that he could possibly make for taking me into his arms, into his bed ... into his heart.

His heart. I know he loved me. He told me as much, more than once. And Clark, just like his super-alter ego, never knew how to lie.

So why should I? I give him an appraising glance up and down and the color returns to his cheeks, burning hotly. "I must say, as magnificent as you've become, I liked the old Clark better." Sly tone, and his eyes glitter with something akin to anger. Ah yes, no one can piss him off as much as I can. "What is it about plaid work shirts anyway?" I muse. "And those lovely tattered jeans slipping halfway down your waist. Just a tug and ..."

A shaking hand reaches out toward me and I don't move. Something frightening has invaded his eyes, the rage that once always simmered just below the innocence, the true alien fury he was capable of. Lesser men would run for their lives from such a look, from such a man, but I merely tilt my head up and meet his eyes, daring him along, just I always have.

Just as I used to when we shared that bed, so many years before.

But he doesn't touch me. Instead, the paperweight I keep on my desk is clasped in his hand: a crystal ball where an eternal meteor storm flutters down over a tiny plastic representation of Smallville's main street. Tacky little thing, I've kept it for years, as a joke ... and a reminder. A reminder of a more innocent time, a more innocent life, a more innocent lust.

All shared with a farmboy named Clark Kent.

He stares at me, our thoughts connect and with one squeeze of his fist, the globe shatters in his palm.

Into a million pieces.

Not unlike whatever was left of my heart.

A heart, yes, I did have a heart once, I think vaguely. It hurt too much though and I cut out most of it with a knife of my own making, leaving hollow veins of ice and bile behind, tearing away the flesh to show the bone beneath.

Two pair of blue eyes lock and I see we both know this now.

Triumph in those eyes, and pain is a two-way street as he lets the glass shards trickle onto my desk, clicking against the ebony. He's gone then, flown away into the Metropolis sky above my lair, soaring through the clouds in a way he never allowed me to experience first- hand, except for when he caught me and hauled me away time and time again to his dull brand of justice.

Except when he made love to me, once upon a time, so very long ago.


end
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